On 2012-03-12, at 10:32 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: > On 3/12/2012 10:15 AM, Marv Gandall wrote: >> Labor Leaders Plan to Apply New Clout in Effort for Obama By >> STEVEN GREENHOUSE New York Times March 11 2012 >> >> As the A.F.L.-C.I.O. prepares to endorse President Obama on >> Tuesday, labor leaders say they will mount their biggest >> campaign effort, with far more union members than ever before — >> at least 400,000, they say — knocking on voters’ doors to >> counter the well-endowed “super PACs” backing Republicans. >> > > Portrait of an AFL-CIO volunteer: > > http://www.marxmail.org/afl_cio_volunteer.GIF
I posted the item because I'm again impressed by the size of the planned mobilization. It shows that the unions, though much diminished, are still by far the best organized and most powerful component of the forces which are gathered under the umbrella of the mass Occupy movement, with the ability to deploy 400,000 members going door-to-door in their neighbourhoods. Would that they were deployed on behalf of the 99% than the current administration, but that is another matter. Any serious left would see these union activists as the closest thing to a US working class "vanguard" which exists - not when measured against their more independent and combative forebears during the heroic period of the labour and socialist movement, but in terms of their class and political consciousness relative to other American workers today. I don't propose to engage in another wearisome debate about the Democrats. Suffice it to say that the willingness of these hundreds of thousands of trade unionists to canvass for the party is an indication that they think their unions and benefits are still better protected under a Democratic rather than a Republican administration, rather than that they're mindless lemmings marching to the dictates of union and party officials. Working people who follow the news can come to this conclusion autonomously. When their experience of US politics persuades them otherwise, they'll begin to move to a third party. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
